Demon

Translated from the Russian by Joseph Brodsky

Where have you flown here from?
What kind of grief d' you carry?
Tell, flier, why your lips do lack
a tint of life, and why the sea smells in your wings?
And Demon answers me: "You're young and hungry,
but sounds won't satiate you. So don't pluck
your tightly drawn discordant strings.
No music's higher than the silence. You were born
for strict, austere silence. Learn
its stamp on stones, on love, on stars above your ground."
He vanished. Darkness fades. God ordered me to sound.
Translated from the Russian by Joseph Brodsky